How to check for ground?

[pigwalk]

Hey guys, I´m out here in South America, and well, people don´t seem to care about wiring up their grounds, which has burnt out one mobo for me already. Are there any settings you can use on a DMM to check if the ground is correctly wired or not? Touching bare metal isn´t the most effective way I hear...

-wil

 

[jpmkm]

Under normal conditions, ground should be at the same potential as neutral, so it is quite easy to test this with a multimeter. Set your meter to AC volts and test between ground and neutral, then test between ground and hot. You should get ~0V between ground and neutral, and whatever the local voltage is between hot and ground. If you get anything wildly different or no reading at all then you most likely have a grounding problem.

 

[Talonz]

Under normal conditions, ground should be at the same potential as neutral, so it is quite easy to test this with a multimeter. Set your meter to AC volts and test between ground and neutral, then test between ground and hot. You should get ~0V between ground and neutral, and whatever the local voltage is between hot and ground. If you get anything wildly different or no reading at all then you most likely have a grounding problem.

Yep. Ground may be off by a little bit, but it should be close to neutral.